


Seven Years

by sky_blue_hightops



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Angst, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Family Feels, Family Issues, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 09:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18232832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_blue_hightops/pseuds/sky_blue_hightops
Summary: They had grown up, over the years. They had grown up all too quick and all too eager, filled with ideas of lives they wanted and lives they didn’t. They had grown up. Children who hadn’t been children in the first place, adults who didn’t feel much like adults at all.





	Seven Years

**Author's Note:**

> Based off Lukas Graham's 7 Years.

They had grown up, over the years. They had grown up all too quick and all too eager, filled with ideas of lives they wanted and lives they didn’t. They had grown up. Children who hadn’t been children in the first place, adults who didn’t feel much like adults at all.

It was hard, stepping foot in a house that had once been their prison. The same paintings stared down from the walls. The same doorknobs sat in the same doors, once gripped with anger or slammed or shut quietly or eased open as to not wake up either sleeping siblings or ever-watchful guardians. The same curtains hung in the same windows, once hid behind in ~~childish~~ foolish games and once looked out from at freedom they could never have and pressed against with warm fingers and cold hearts. The same beds were in the corners of the same rooms they had cried, screamed, slept, laughed, played, fought in.

It was hard, stepping foot in a house full of memories. Their father had once warned against time travel, years and years ago. Said it messed with the mind. He had meant time travel of the literal form. But this, this sharp pain that came with adult eyes glancing up at oil portraits and adult hands turning burnished handles and adult fingers brushing the satin of the window drapes and adult bodies dropping onto ratty quilts, felt much the same. It was easy, after all, to stand in the front hall again and feel seven years old again. To feel small.

They all hadn’t changed much. Luther was still the same, still loyal and naive and insecure, still touched with their father’s cruelty. He still was as desperate as ever to prove himself a good leader, still as desperate as ever to be accepted by the others despite the fact that the yawning chasm between them was almost as old as they were, and just as hungry and broken.

Diego was still as brash and angry and brittle as he had been as a teenager, glares as sharp as the knives strapped in the harness he always wore. He still wore all black and still hid all his wounds, except these were old and festering and he never had been much for talking, had he? His fingers found the handles of his blades much faster than his mouth found the words for what he wanted to say.

Allison was still self-centered, emotional, lonely. She still wanted them to fit together all the ways they never had as kids, to click together into the family she believed they could be. She still tried her best to fill the holes her childhood had left behind, like they all had, but she had done the best - on the surface. And that was all any of them had it in them to do, anyways. Their father had inflicted wounds in them he hadn’t taught them how to sew up, and their mother had only ever had bandaids. So they made do.

Klaus was still vulnerable, was still just this side of crazy, was still as rebellious and as high as he had been before they all left. Klaus still had that air of unpredictability that was both annoying and endearing, and still pushed and tugged for attention and to care for the others. He still disappeared for hours, days at a time, off who-knows-where, even if his reasons for being absent were all-together different than the reasons he had had as a child. Even if these disappearances were voluntary, while the ones of his childhood were not.

Five was, well...after he returned, Five was quite literally the same, in regards to his appearance. The Five that came back to them after so many years, in regards to his mind, was changed. His arrogance was still there, but behind it was fear. He had already been through losing it all. He didn’t want to go through it again. His bark had bite, this time around. His hands dripped with blood he didn’t know how to wash off, and under his fingernails was chalk dust he couldn’t quite scrub away.

Ben wasn’t there. Ben wasn’t there and it _hurt_. His voice still echoed down the halls of their childhoods, and his shadow still leaned against door frames. He had died long enough ago that the details of his face, his eyes, his hair, his nose had all faded at the edges a bit. But his smile was still there, lingering on the fringes of memory, something raw and bittersweet.

(Ben _was_ there. Ben was there and it hurt, because he could look and watch and worry for every second of every minute of every hour of every day and do nothing. Because his hands passed through at every attempt. Because sometimes even he forgot he was there, because in those terrifyingly-quiet moments of the night sometimes he forgot his own name. Because sometimes, he refused to admit to himself, sometimes he forgot the names of his siblings. And that really was the scariest prospect of them all, wasn’t it? Forgetting the very thing that tied him to this earth. Forgetting the very thing he lived and died for.)

Vanya was the same. Vanya was unremarkable, and ordinary, and boring, and unexceptional, and every little label she had been assigned over the long, painful years. Vanya was the same, with fingers calloused from violin strings and a heart calloused from neglect. Her eyes still held concern. Her hands still shook at loud voices. Her pocket still held that little orange pill bottle. She still had too many words to say and not nearly enough courage, and too much hurt to express and not nearly enough stability.

They were all the same. They were all broken. They had all been broken. And their jagged edges still caught on each others’ the way they always had, all healing wounds and bloody fingers and drawn eyebrows. But jagged edges heal, given enough time.

So how much time would it take?


End file.
